Bobby Prince
Robert Caskin Prince, III | ||||||||||
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Robert Caskin Prince, III (he goes by Bobby) is a 1966 graduate of the University of Georgia with a bachelor's degree in psychology. He also attended Emory University for graduate school, but left early to join the army. In 1972, after his time in the military, he returned to school and got a masters of education in Counseling. With his new degree he studied law enforcement. This piqued his interest in law and he earned a Juris Doctor at law school and passed the bar. His career in law lasted several years, but around 1991 he switched over to music composition.
Prince saw a messageboard on Prodigy asking for people interested in music composition for computer games. After responding to the message, he was contacted by Scott Miller of Apogee Software. This led him to a talk with John Romero of id Software, where he started work composing music for the second series of Commander Keen.
Prince worked with id Software from 1991 to 1994 composing music for games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Also, during this time, he composed music for several other companies that whose games were published by Apogee like the Blake Stone and Duke Nukem series. He sequenced his music with an Ensoniq EPS keyboard. After his time with id Software he worked for a large number of gaming companies composing music for a wide range of titles. He currently keeps himself busy composing his own music with help from his brother David in Georgia. He also plays the saxophone in a band.
Around November 2016, Bobby was diagnosed with colon cancer. He underwent grueling treatments for years, had various surgeries, had a recurrence, and went through more treatment. He still isn't fully healthy, but is doing much better. You can help contribute to his medical bills on his GoFundMe Page.
Contents
Music Development
DOS
Bobby created music for all of his DOS games by creating MIDI files in Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold with the help of his Ensoniq EPS. The MIDI files were later converted into the games' formats such as MUS (DMX).
Though Prince used the EPS in most of his work, he also acknowledges the problems known with the keyboard;
SNES
Wolfenstein 3D
Bobby had to rearrange his music from the DOS version's YM3812 (9-11 channels) to the eight sound channels of the SNES. However, since the SNES utilized digitized instrument samples, the music is in slightly better fidelity. His MIDI files were converted to Rebecca Heineman's sound driver. According to Rebecca, the instruments heard in the SNES version were taken from an Ensoniq SQ-1; interesting since Prince used an Ensoniq EPS in his work. However, the music plays slightly faster in the SNES version.
Doom
The SNES conversion of Doom was handled by Sculptured Software. Though Paul Webb and Bob Dayley are both credited, it is most likely Paul handled all the music arrangements while Bob did sound effects, based on their credits in other games. The audio team most likely received Prince's MIDI files.
According to Paul Webb, he made SNES music in Wolfgang, which was converted to his BMus sound driver. Paul also used the Ensoniq EPS like Prince did, as well as its upgraded version, the EPS16, and sourced samples from it for his SNES music.
Gameography
Picture Gallery
Working at id Software, circa 1992.
Links
- bpmusic.com - Official.
- facebook.com/bobby.prince - Facebook.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Prince - Wikipedia.